


Day 4: Free Day

by GemmaRose



Series: Lancelot Week [4]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Comfort, Crying, Hugs, Identity Reveal, Interrogation, M/M, Memory Magic, Rescue, Shock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-22
Updated: 2017-11-22
Packaged: 2019-02-05 10:57:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12793110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GemmaRose/pseuds/GemmaRose
Summary: Lotor has spent his whole life believing that his mother was lost to the rift, and that she loved him with all her heart. To discover that she is in fact the witch Haggar... it’s a good thing he has people to put him back together again.





	Day 4: Free Day

“Lotor.” a familiar dry voice spat.

“Haggar.” he replied coolly, narrowing his eyes at the High Priestess. “You’re looking decrepit as usual.”

“And your time in hiding has done nothing to dull your tongue.” she returned, coming to a halt in front of the chair he’d been strapped to. “Voltron has retreated, so don’t think you’ll be escaping this like you did the attack on your secret base.”

Lotor scowled, then scowled harder when Haggar’s smirk widened at his reaction. She had forced his hand there, and she knew it. Spiteful witch, he could hardly wait to turn her into a corpse.

“You’ve made your opinion of me quite clear, but I like to think myself a reasonable person.” she said, ignoring his glare. “So, if you cooperate, I may be persuaded to kill you quickly instead of leaving your fate up to Zarkon.”

“Over your dead body.” he snarled, baring his teeth at the druid.

“Fine, then.” Haggar lifted her hands, the sleeves of her robes falling back as dark energy cracled between her fingertips. “I’ll learn what I want the hard way. _How did you locate the meteor?_ ” her words resonated with power, and Lotor gasped as the magic between her fingers lashed out like lightning.

-

He tilted his head, pausing in his scroll through the old files. Their labelling was archaic, as expected of documents from before the loss of Daibazaal, but there was a definite logic to them. Date, subject, name and rank of writer. Most names only showed up attached to certain subjects, with the handful of names that attached to all of them all being of a rank he presumed was one of the highest the Altean government had offered to its scientists. He hadn’t seen the name on this document on any others with this subject, and the attached rank was... maybe a typo? Perhaps they had been promoted, and simply forgotten to change their document signature. He typed the name into the search bar, and his eyebrows raised on his forehead as he scrolled through the list. That name was only attached to two files of that subject, and they were the last two files with that name.

“What’s this?” Axca asked, leaning over the back of his seat and looking at the screen in his hand.

“I’m not sure.” he admitted, selecting the files and copying them to his personal folder to read later. “But I intend to find out.”

“ _Clever boy_.” a disembodied voice hissed as his vision dissolved. “ _How did you acquire the meteor?_ ”

He watched the rift open again, Voltron coming back through with a faintly glowing meteor in tow.

“ _How was it crafted?_ ” the voice hissed again, his vision swimming. The cockpit of his ship faded, and was replaced by the inside of his base. Specifically, the large room full of ancient machinery. It had taken weeks to extract it from the remains of what had once been Altea, and even longer to repair it. Once that had been done, though, it worked more smoothly than anything he’d ever seen before. “ _How many ships were completed?_ ”

His vision shifted again, and Lotor gritted his teeth against a spike of pain. Axca, Ezor, Zethrid, they would all be in danger if he let anyone know exactly how far the work on Sincline had progressed before being forcibly halted by Zarkon’s attack.

“ _How much of the comet has been used?_ ” the voice hissed again, this time more forcefully. His vision swam, and despite his struggles soon resolved into another scene. Static, but no less damning than a full memory. His Generals stood flanking him, looking out over the work of galran robots and ancient altean machinery. Two ships sat in the hangar, gleaming in the light, while the remaining third of the comet was in the process of being moulded into shape.

“ _Excellent. Now, **why** did you build these ships?_ ”

Lotor bit down on the inside of his cheek, thinking hard about the first ship’s cannon piercing the castle’s shields like they were nothing.

“ _ **Why?**_ ”

Against his will, a memory swam into focus. He was small, tired, his head resting on his mother’s shoulder and eyes only half open as she walked. Her hair smelled like flowers, her hand on his back warm and comforting. She was humming, or perhaps singing, he couldn’t recall but her voice was nice. She stopped, and he whined when she held him away from the warmth of her body. Larger hands wrapped around him, and he quieted as he was brought against an equally familiar body. His father’s voice washed over him, words lost to the fog of time which made everything so indistinct, but the feeling of love and safety as his mother’s hands brushed over his face was unmistakable.

The memory faded without prompting, changing to one much sharper but still slightly out of focus. He was still small, but not quite as much so, curled up under a blanket with a tablet. Taking up half the screen was an ancient picture of his parents. Father in strange white armour and Mother in a scientist’s robes, embracing in front of a battered landscape with a round building off to the side that looked distinctly out of place. In the other half of the screen, a copy of a report dated just quintants before the destruction of Daibazaal: Queen Honerva Lost to Rift.

-

“How precious.” Hagar sneered as reality slammed back into Lotor with all the force of a supernova. “You missed your mother, did you?”

“What difference do my motivations make to you?” he snapped bitterly.

“Because.” Haggar smiled, the expression distinctly unnatural on her gaunt face. “Since you were driven by foolishness, rather than a desire for power, your father’s punishment is unnecessary.”

“Is it so foolish to want to at least give my mother’s body a proper burial?” he bared his teeth at Haggar again.

“Yes, it is.” she said simply. He began to snarl, but her next words struck him silent. “After all, I’m not dead.”

“What?” he breathed, all fire deserting him in the face of Haggar’s unexpected statement. She lifted a hand and pushed her hood back, revealing pointed ears identical to his own. Her eyes slid shut, and the breath left Lotor’s lungs as her skin faded from purple to brown. The same colour as his own, on the rare occasions he released his shift. Her eyes opened, flat gold replaced by white sclera with a red iris, and for the first time in his life he noticed that they were the same shape as his own.

“Are you really so surprised?” she smiled, and somehow having eyes with pupils made it even more unnerving. “You did take so much after me.” she reached out and lifted a lock of his hair, the same pure white as hers. “But not enough.” she pulled his hand away, and something so cold it burned ripped through Lotor’s chest as she turned away, her skin and eyes returning to the purple and gold which looked so natural on her. “You should never have been woken from that pod.”

He opened his mouth, to say what he wasn’t sure, but all that left it was a grunt as the room was rocked by a loud explosion. Alarms began to blare, and Haggar’s face contorted in disgust. “I’ll deal with you later.” she said, and flipped her hood up as she turned to stride from the room.

Once she was gone Lotor slumped in the chair, hanging limp in his restraints. The burning cold had expanded to fill his whole body, making his core feel heavy and the rest of the world distant. Honerva hadn’t died, that day in the rift. His mother had lived, had taken the title of High Priestess instead of Empress, had-

The door sliding opened jerked him from his thoughts, and Lotor looked up to see a figure in bright white armour looking at him. Slender build, broad shoulders, blue accents. Lance, he couldn’t let Lance see him in this state. “Found him!” Lance grinned, hurrying into the room. “Okay, hold still, I’ve gotta shoot these open.” he placed the barrel of his bayard against the cuff holding Lotor’s wrist to the arm of the chair, and Lotor used the time it took to free his limbs to get his face under control.

Lotor let Lance drag him by the hand through the ship’s corridors, back to the Lion parked awkwardly in a hangar bay not meant for building-sized ships, and sat down against the back wall of the cockpit as they headed back to the castle. The whole time, the heaviness and detached feelings persisted. “Why did you come back for me?” he asked, once they were away from the battleship. Lance leaned over to look back at him, a frown pulling at his lips.

“Why wouldn’t we?” he asked, as if Lotor was truly one of them.

“Nevermind.” he muttered, fixing his gaze on the comms screen. The various coloured boxes were lighting up intermittently, but none of the other Paladins’ voices had been audible since they received the order to pull back to the castle. Lance frowned properly, then sat back up and looked at the viewscreen. Lotor shut his eyes and let his head droop, trying to pull himself together.

“Lotor?” Lance’s voice came from much closer than the pilot’s seat, and Lotor opened his eyes to see the Paladin crouched in front of him with a worried expression. “Hey, you don’t look so hot. Do you want me to tell Coran we’ll need a pod ready?”

“I’m fine, Lance. Honestly.” he managed a small smile, which had served to convince the Paladins in the past. It didn’t work this time. If anything, Lance’s frown seemed to deepen even further.

“You were strapped to that chair, that room stank of druid magic, and you’re still out of it.” Lance said, laying a hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay to ask us for help. You know that, right?”

Lotor looked aside, doing his best to keep his face impassive. “We’ll be landing soon. You’ll be needed for the debrief.” he said, but Lance didn’t move.

“Debrief can wait.” he said dismissively. “At least until I know how to help you.” he squeezed Lotor’s shoulder, a pressure barely noticeable through his armour. “Do you want to talk with someone, or should I tell the others you need alone time and bring you something to eat after dinner?”

“The latter.” he said quickly, and Lance gave him a sad little smile.

“You’re gonna have to talk it out with someone sooner or later. You know we won’t let this fester, right?”

He wasn’t sure if it was the human’s tone, or expression, or even just his words, but something about his statement made the cold clinging to the inside of Lotor’s ribs snap like ice, shards as sharp as glass cutting hot and bloody through his chest. “I just learnt that my own mother didn’t want me, Lance.” he snapped, rising quickly to his feet. “That’s not something that any amount of _talking_ will fix.”

His spotted the walls of the hangar closing around them, and turned on his heel to face the door which lead to the rest of the Lion. It let him out without issue, and he managed to get to his quarters without running into any of the castle’s other residents. Shucking off his armour, he fell onto the narrow bed and stared blankly up at the ceiling. It felt like only a few doboshes, but a glance at the clock told him it had been almost two vargas when the door to his room opened again.

“I brought food.” Lance said, crossing the room to sit on the edge of the mattress. Lotor said nothing, just kept staring at the ceiling. He should eat, he _knew_ he should eat, but he wasn’t hungry in the slightest. “Look, about your mom...” he trailed off awkwardly, and Lotor slowly turned his head to give the human a blank look. “I’m sorry both your parents are such assholes.”

That almost startled a laugh out of Lotor. “That’s a bit of an understatement.” he drawled instead, sitting up and taking the bowl of food from Lance. Even if altean food goo was the least appetizing thing he’d ever eaten, military travel rations included, he needed energy to recover from the toll of Haggar’s- _Honerva’s_ \- magic on his body.

“It is, isn’t it.” Lance chuckled, a small smile pulling at his lips for a tick. “I’m adopted, y’know.” he said without preamble, eyes fixed on the wall across the room. “My moms got me as a baby because my birth mom didn’t want me either.”

Lotor raised an eyebrow.

“I guess what I’m trying to say is, I get it, y’know?” Lance looked at him. “I don’t remember my birth mom, but it used to hurt thinking she couldn’t even be bothered to give me a name.” he clenched his jaw, fingers curling into a fist for a tick before he exhaled heavily. “And that was when I had my moms and siblings around, and my moms made sure we all knew they loved us.”

Something twinged painfully in Lotor’s chest through the cold haze, and it must’ve shown on his face because a tick later Lance leaned against his shoulder and wrapped an arm around his back. “You don’t have any siblings, and your parents suck, but you’re not alone.” the human said, tightening his arm in an approximation of a hug. “You’ve got us.” Lance grinned up at him, but it vanished almost instantly. “Shit, are you okay?” he yelped, withdrawing his arm and sitting up straight. Lotor stared at him blankly, and Lance reached out to run a thumb over his cheek. “You’re crying.”

“What?” he lifted a hand to his face, and his fingertips came away wet. “Huh. So I am.” he muttered. The painful twinge was growing now, dissipating the haze which had filled his head, and he felt fresh hot tears well in the corners of his eyes as he remembered his mother’s words. Now that the shock was fading, it _hurt_. More than attacking Narti, more than Axca turning on him, more than his original banishment.

“Do you wanna talk to Coran about it?”

Lotor shook his head, throat aching as he tried to draw a breath without letting it hitch.

“One of the others?”

He shook his head again. He had an image to maintain, after all.

“C’mere.” Lance grabbed him by the shoulders, and Lotor set his half-eaten bowl of food goo aside before letting the human pull him into a proper hug. It was awkward, what with Lance trying to wrap around Lotor despite being a full head shorter, but also the best hug he’d received in- far too long. “Your parents are stupid for not wanting you.” he said, voice firm as if stating an obvious fact.

Lotor couldn’t help it, he chuckled. It came out wet and broken, and Lance hugged him tighter. “My mother was the brightest mind to ever call the Empire home.” he chuckled again, and Lance pulled away slightly.

“Was?”

“Is.” Lotor corrected with a shake of his head. “For most of my life, I thought her lost to the rift. I thought that if I could just get her back, Father-” his voice caught in his throat, and Lance made a sympathetic noise as he pulled him back into a tight hug.

“I miss my family too.” Lance murmured, and Lotor carefully wrapped his arms around the Paladin’s lower back. “My moms, my siblings, I miss them every single day. I’d give just about anything to be with them.”

Lotor’s breath hitched again, and Lance hugged him tighter. “She was alive.” he choked out, tears carving hot tracks down his cheeks. “My whole life, she was there, and she never even cared enough to-”

“Shh, it’s okay.” Lance whispered, hand moving down from his head to rub firm circles between his shoulder blades. “It’s okay, let it all out. I won’t tell anyone.”

It felt like vargas before his tears ran dry.


End file.
